Lingering violence, intolerance and oppression in Tunisia, following the ousting of former dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011, tells the revolutionaries who sparked the Arab Spring that their work is just beginning.

The two weeks since Egypt's abrupt cancellation of a Mubarak-era gas-export deal with Israel have seen an exchange of indirect threats and warnings between the two countries, culminating in an apparent Israeli military build-up on the border of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

"Is that your photo on the poster?" a policeman asked a woman standing in front of an electoral campaign board in Algiers. "Why do you ask?" she inquired. "Because only the candidates are interested in these elections," he replied.

"They made me drink my own urine," said one former detainee, Addam Ayedh al-Shayef, describing his experiences in detainment in Yemen. "When I refused to drink it, they electrocuted me. After I came home, I would dream I was still being tortured and I'd wake up screaming."

More than a year since president Hosni Mubarak was removed from power, the money he allegedly syphoned from Egypt during his 29-year rule remains beyond the reach of authorities attempting to recover it.

Citing growing violence and polarisation along sectarian lines, human rights groups and independent experts here are urging Washington to exert more pressure on the government of Bahrain to free political prisoners and launch a serious dialogue with its opposition on major democratic reforms.

The Lebanese army seized a ship last weekend carrying three containers filled with weapons reportedly intended for Syria’s rebel fighters. Although Lebanon has remained relatively stable throughout the sustained violence next door in Syria, this discovery is the most recent reminder that the country is far from immune to the unrest plaguing its neighbour.

The widespread practice of marrying minors continues to be one of the most incendiary legal and political issues in Morocco today, causing open confrontations between hard-line Islamists and moderates throughout the country.

The recent outbreak of violence between the largely segregated Zwai and Tabu tribes in Libya’s remote, Saharan town of Kufra shattered the uneasy calm that held since last February’s clashes, resulting in more than 100 deaths. The clashes illustrate the challenges in building a new state.

In a major speech commemmorating the Nazi Holocaust, U.S. President Barack Obama Monday announced several steps his administration will take to curb mass atrocities abroad, including in Syria where he is under continuing pressure to intervene with military force.

It might be a cliché and often an elaborate exaggeration to term a particular event "historic". However, few can doubt that along with the Civil Rights movements, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the revolutions that have swept through the Arab world are no less momentous or historic.

The world’s recent financial and political upheavals have not been kind to women. In Libya’s Tripoli, female suicide rates increased tenfold during the revolution, while dismal job prospects have young Greek women abandoning their career aspirations, participants in a global forum on women’s rights said over the weekend.

A government plan to reform Morocco’s dilapidated justice system, the details of which are still a mystery to the general public, has become the subject of much scepticism, especially from justice professionals around the country.

Thousands of centre-left demonstrators violently clashed with police in street battles that completely shut down central Tunis last week, left scores seriously injured and underlined the persistent divisions in Tunisian society.